


until then. then maybe.

by ADaftMyriad



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 11:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18755656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADaftMyriad/pseuds/ADaftMyriad
Summary: A fix-it/continuation of the proposal scene in 8x04.‘We'll fill the castle with bastards like me and runaways like you. And you can train them to fight, to be strong and I can make them armour to protect them and maybe one day I'll make us all some cutlery too but until then—’Arya saw little girls and boys with dark hair and brown eyes, blue eyes... eyes she could open to the world, eyes she could protect and teach.





	1. Until Then. Then Maybe.

Arya stared at him in awe. Gendry. A lord.

‘I don’t know how to be a lord of anything. I hardly know how to use a fork,’ he said.

Her gaze softened at his humble words.

‘All I know is that you’re beautiful and I love you and none of it will be worth anything if you’re not with me.’

Arya’s heart beat wildly in her chest.

‘So be with me,’ Gendry said.

Just like that. Like it was that simple and just as simply he dropped down onto one knee.

‘Be my wife. Be the Lady of Storm’s End.’

He looked up at her with such hope. A night ago he’d handed her a weapon here and now he offered marriage.

Arya’s heart stuttered in a way it hadn’t before because she knew she had to take that hope away from him. She knelt down slowly and took his face in her hands to kiss him.

They stood as one and Arya savoured the taste of his kiss as they parted, knowing it would be their last.

‘You’ll be a wonderful lord,’ she told him, ‘and any lady would be lucky to have you. But I’m not a lady. I never have been.’

Arya saw his face start to fall, realisation dawning. And as much as it made her throat tighten like the Night King’s grip was back around it, she had to do it, he had to know this.

‘That’s not me,’ she told him and before she could see the pain in his eyes she turned, nocked the arrow, raised the bow and steadied the almost imperceptible shake of her arms that to the keen eyed would appear only as a tremble but felt like a quake in her bones.

_Not me. Not today._

She could hear Gendry's breath, heavy, behind her. She remembered the feel of it on her neck the night before, on her chest, her ribs, her thighs...

She pulled the string back and took her shot.

‘Well, well you don't have to be!’ Gendry floundered.

The arrow missed its target.

‘We—we won't eat with knives and forks we'll use hands.' Arya turned back to him slowly, his brow was creased and he talked hurriedly with his hands. There was still a waning hope in his eyes. She'd seen it before in the dying just before they knew their time was truly up. 

'It's not like I've got any other family or people to make a House with; we'll fill the castle with bastards like me and runaways like you. And you can train them to fight, to be strong and I can make them armour to protect them and maybe one day I'll make us all some cutlery too but until then—’

Arya saw little girls and boys with dark hair and brown eyes, blue eyes... Eyes she could open to the world, eyes she could protect and teach.

Eyes of children running around the castle, chasing each other with swords — wooden ones — and when they caught up to one another all that happened was them falling down in a fit of giggles. No blood gushing from their mouths as they held their stomachs and struggled for breath. A life after war. After death.

When they were old enough the swords could become steel. So that they never had to be alone, frightened and defenceless again. Their own brotherhood. A small Stark Baratheon army with direwolves and stags on the backs of their troop.

A family.

‘Look I don't know how to be a lord and you don't know how to be a lady — not one that keeps you as yourself. I don't want to change you. And the only reason I want to be a lord is because it would mean a roof over my head. A pretty permanent one, I'd hope. Food too. No starving or running or hiding— ’

Arya put a finger to Gendry’s lips to cease his rambling pleas of hopes and promises.

‘I'm going to King’s Landing. I'm going to kill Cersei,’ she told him.

Gendry gently clasped the hand of the finger at his lips with his own and brought it down in front of him.

'I'm not going to stop you. In fact, I want to come with you if your sister will let me. We could fight alongside each other and then we could rest next each other.’ He stepped closer again. ‘Please, Arya. Please just consider it.’

His hand moved to her temple. Her eyes closed as he stroked her hair and she remembered the feeling of their last kiss. How she wanted to savour it.

Arya hadn't felt this in so long she didn't know what it was called and then all at once she remembered its name; tenderness. 

Up until a few minutes ago she could have continued to fool herself that apart from friendship all she wanted from Gendry was physical. But now she knew that to be a lie. She wanted him in ways she never wanted anyone. And worst of all she _wanted_ him to want her like this. 

She swallowed thickly.

‘I don't know how.’

Gendry gave her a smile, his eyes shining in the dim firelight.

‘Neither do I,’ he said with a small laugh, his voice raspy. ‘That's the point.’

Would there be time for tenderness after the war? She wanted there to be. She wanted to figure out how and the only person she wanted to do that with was Gendry.

‘I'm going to finish the war and then... If...  I survive, you survive, the world survives...then maybe.'

Gendry’s face broke into a smile she’d never seen before. Her heart thumped in her chest.

'I'll take maybe,' he said and then kissed her without restraint. Her hand snaked up behind his neck and kept him close. This didn’t have to be their last.

'I think I was supposed to ask Jon first anyway,’ Gendry said when they broke apart.

She laughed, a strange feeling of giddiness overtaking her even though she’d drunk no ale tonight.

‘Yes. Or Sansa. She’s into customs and the proper order of things,’ Arya said.

‘That scares me more.’

‘ _She_ can't ride a dragon.’

‘Only because Daenerys doesn’t like her enough to let her,’ Gendry countered.

‘You mean Sansa doesn't like Daenerys enough to want to get a chance.’

They laughed, bodies still pressed together, looking at each other with a new kind of wonder.

‘We can have wolves on the banners,’ Gendry said. ‘Next to a stag.’

‘The stag would have to be small,’ Arya said.

‘It's doable.' Gendry nodded, that same look on his face as when he was designing a weapon; imagining the process behind his eyes, it his sole focus as he saw how it could all come together. 'Besides I like small things,' he said with a smile, his attention coming back to her.

_Apart from hammers_ , she thought and her mouth twisted to hold back the words.

'They're mostly horn,' she said. The stags head would be tiny.

‘I think they're called antlers.’

She quirked a brow.

'Do you, my lord? Has m'lord been studying the sigil? Does m'lord—’

‘Okay, firstly don't call me that.’ Arya grinned. Gendry dropped his voice. 'At least not until... after.’ Her smile faltered at the reminder of what had yet to be surmounted. ‘Second, I had to hammer the bloody thing into armour and onto hilts for years so I learnt what a sodding antler was.’

‘I'll believe you,’ Arya said with a lofty tilt to her head that suggested he was honoured to receive such a grace. But it didn’t seem to bait him like it once might have instead it only made him look at her more fondly. And fondness was a thing that she was getting suddenly so very used to when it came to Gendry.

‘I'll make you a ring,’ he said, his voice low and earnest.

‘Gendry... You shouldn't until...’ she cast her eyes down. This couldn’t work. They were dreaming like fools, surely.

‘Okay, okay,’ he said, rubbing her arm gently. ‘Not until we survive it. But I could make you something to take? Just a token. If you hate it you can just say you lost it on the battlefield. And I promise not to go combing through it to check.

‘Liar,’ she said, eyes narrow. He smiled at her sheepishly.

‘Not for long. Just a day,’ he said and traced a finger down her cheek.

‘Nothing big. Nothing obvious,’ she whispered.

‘Oh,’ he murmured. ‘So a hammer is out.’

‘Yes, a bloody great big hammer is out,’ she said.

He grinned.

‘A locket? I'm no silversmith but I could try—’

‘There's not much time.’

‘No,’ he said, his chest deflating and she could see the thoughts racing in to his mind. The thoughts he’d pulled her out of when he found her practicing with this bow and arrow. The thoughts he’d helped her dare to dream could be a thing of the past one day.

She wanted to believe for just a little longer in the future Gendry saw for them.

‘There's time for something else,’ she said and took him by the hand into the Keep and up to her chambers. 

 

*

 

‘Oh and I’ll need a list,’ Arya said as she led in his arms.

‘A list?’

‘Just a small one. Just the three names.’

‘Of who?’

‘Those girls who slept with you.’

‘Arya, you can’t— you have nothing to be jealous of.’

‘Well I was going to make sure they got out of that city alive, at least thank them, but if you’d rather they perish...’

 Gendry sighed, resting his head back against the pillow.

 ‘Gods its not easy being in love with an assassin,’ he muttered and felt the curve of Arya’s smile against his chest.

 ‘Speak three names and a girl will do the rest.’

 ‘Not murder though, right? Right?’

 ‘Right.’

 ‘How, er, how thankful are you exactly?’

 ‘Fairly.’

 ‘ _Fairly?_ ’

 ‘Mhmm.’

 ‘I was hoping more for very.’

 ‘Well perhaps that’s correct,’ Arya said a hand snaking down his chest. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, raising her head up from his chest and placing a kiss at his navel, ‘greatly. Perhaps, immensely.’

Gendry flipped her over in one swift motion.

 ‘Lets make it a great debt,’ he murmured as he pinned her arms above her head just as she liked and moved down her body, ‘one that needs repaying, over and over,’ he placed a kiss with each word down her stomach, ‘and over and—’

 ‘Ohh,’ she moaned as his mouth met her again in the best way. ‘Gendry,’ she breathed.

 ‘A girl gives a man his own name?’

 Arya’s thighs tightened like a vice around his head.

 ‘A man is very sorry and will stop talking now,’ said Gendry’s muffled voice. Her thighs released him and he saw the smile on her face before he dipped his mouth back down.

 

 After he asked her not to leave without saying goodbye this time. Waking up on the morning of the battle without her had tripled the panic he felt at the sound of the horns signifying the coming storm.

She didn't.

He was the one to leave, scrambling to put on his clothes after Arya had dismissed a maid knocking on the door. He ran back to the bed to kiss her before he hurried out the door praying to any gods who'd hear him that the forge hadn't gone out over night after he’d left it far longer than he had meant to.

On the morning she did leave for war, in the dawning light she didn't want to say goodbye, so she pressed a kiss to his forehead and left the chamber with an unspoken promise between them.

She’d just finished preparing her horse and swung up on to it when he came running. 

‘Oi!’ Gendry’s breathless voice filled the frigid courtyard. With a sigh she turned the horse around.

‘I _am_ going—’

‘I know. I'm not stopping you.’ He thrusted a cold object into her hands. ‘Take this.’ 

Arya looked at the tool.

‘What is it? A hammer?’

‘Well sort of. A small one.’

‘What do you use it for?’

‘Doesn't matter. I've got two. That's my best one though so bring it back.’

‘You're planning on rebuilding Winterfell with your second best tools? Sansa will be gravely upset.’

‘I can get the job done but bring that back with you and, yeah, I can make something even better. The _best_.’

Arya felt the weight of his words as heavy as the tool in her palm. What they could build together. The best of things.

‘It won't be much good for killing,’ she said.

It was clunky but she could do the job with it if it came down to it. Blunt force. But she didn’t like her kills to be as blunt as her words, not unless they had to. She fought with skill, accuracy, a lethal litheness. This wasn’t the light sleek perfectly balanced blades she preferred. This was one of Gendry’s tools for sure.

'It's not meant for that,’ Gendry said.

Construction not destruction.

'Heavy too. Might slow me down,' she murmured still looking at it and not Gendry.

She had left without a goodbye to his woken form for a reason. She found it hard going in to battle having just seen his eyes.

It was dangerous to have attachments to things on the battlefield — they didn’t always spur you on, sometimes they distracted you from your goal. And Gendry’s face, Gendry’s face was very distracting to her. It got more distracting each day they spent together, each hour and there’d only been a few since they’d reunited.

'If it does, drop it where you stand. No point keeping it if you can't bring it back.’ Arya looked now to his face as he spoke, so hopeful, so ready to give her anything, even let her go if that’s what she wanted. ‘But if it helps remind you of home, of what's here...'

Arya leant down, grabbed his face and pulled it up to her for a kiss. She wanted to tell him many things and make many promises but she’d had too many of those broken by people she loved after they went to war.

‘I'll try and smash Cersei's face in with it,’ she said, breathless as they parted.

A grin split across Gendry’s face. 

‘Why is that the most loving thing you've ever said to me?’

She left him with a grin of her own.

‘Arya!’ he called after her, ‘say hello to Hot Pie! Tell him I'm looking for a cook!’

'He'll never stop making you pies,' she called back over her shoulder.

‘Hope not! And don't get too much blood on that!’

‘It'll wash off!’

‘Please?’ he shouted back.

She turned her face around this time to respond, his mind ghosted back to the first time he’d seen her since arriving at Winterfell — a beautiful rich girl teasing him as she left the forge.

‘Yes, my lord.’     



	2. The Quietest & The Loudest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya's gone. Gendry waits. Sansa scares him.

‘M'lady, may I have a word?’ Gendry found Sansa stood with Brienne up at the head table in the Great Hall.

‘My Lord,’ Sansa responded, turning around.

Gendry blinked; he had been sure they were alone in the room. He checked behind him and his head snapped back at the sound of supressed mirth.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘New titles are… confusing,’ said Brienne. ‘Adjustment takes time, I find.’

‘Yes, m'lady. Ser!’ 

_Gods swallow me up where I stand._

Gendry raised his reddening face to address Sansa again.

‘M’lady, Jon is away and Arya suggested you would be the best one to discuss this matter with.’ He took a deep breath, this was worse than waiting for that first wight to reach the top of the walls. ‘Lady Sansa, I would be honoured to have the hand of your sister in marriage. I have a House now and a name to give her not that I think she cares much if any for those things.’ 

‘ _You_ want to marry _my_ sister?’

Gendry swallowed thickly, forced his back to remain straight, his head to stay high.

‘I don't know how much Arya's told you about our time together. I've known her for years. And in that time I’ve loved her in one way or another for longer than I've known myself, who I am or what I wanted to be. And I don't just mean stags and lordships and castles and all that.’

‘You mean heraldry and,’ Sansa continued as if she had a bad taste on her tongue, ‘”all that?”’ 

‘Yes.’

‘And you think, knowing my sister as well as you claim to, that she would be open to such a proposal?’ Sansa said, her eyes narrow.

‘No, not at all.’

Sansa quirked a brow, taken aback.

‘And she told me as much — I got a bit ahead of myself, the high of winning the battle and becoming a lord...’

‘So you've already asked her.’

‘Yes.’

‘And she said no.’

‘No.’

‘She said yes?’

‘No. She said maybe.’

Sansa could barely contain the smirk that played on her lips. He tried not to wince.

‘I imagine that was a blow to your ego, Lord Baratheon.’

‘Not at all. She's been insulting me, telling me what to do, nagging me ever since we met. I saved her from getting picked on and she’s been a pain in my arse ever since, I mean a real pain, doing whatever she wants, making deals, killing whoever she wanted... and well, ultimately saving my arse too. So, no I don't want to change that. And I think she believes me that it wouldn't have to.’

‘If you had convinced her of that I think you might not have been left with only a maybe. I won't give my approval to any marriage for my sister without her expressed and explicit consent. And that is something you should have known about me if you so wish to join this family.’

Gendry’s heart sank. Sansa didn’t understand. How could he make her understand him and Arya and what they’d been through and what they meant to one another?

‘But she just wants to kill Cersei first and if she survives she'll come back and—’

‘Explicit consent. Do you understand what that means, Lord Baratheon?’

‘Yes, m’lady,’ Gendry said, his head bowed.

‘It means not maybe, not perhaps, not “you might do if I have to”, it means, “Sansa, I want to marry Gendry and there’ll be Gods all you can do about it to stop me” because that’s the only sentence I can hear that will convince me it is truly my sister standing in front of me telling me she actually wishes to take a husband.’

Gendry’s face stung even though she hadn’t hit him. A dressing down from Sansa Stark was worse than any he’d had from his mother or the women who ran the orphanages.

‘Duly, _duly_ , noted, m’lady,’ Gendry said, daring to peek up at her briefly. ‘My apologies for any misunderstanding.’

Sansa looked down the length of her nose at him, considered him and his sincerity for a moment or two, before turning and walking away.

Her footsteps echoed throughout the hall and Gendry felt his heart sink further with each one.

‘Storm’s End is not far from Tarth. You’d be a welcome neighbour,’ Brienne said. He looked up at her words, her mouth twitched as if she wanted to say more but thought better of it and remembering her allegiance followed promptly after Sansa.

Whereas Brienne had looked at him with pity, Sansa hadn’t been able to hold back her disdain. Arya said Sansa had changed but he remembered Arya talking of her never accepting their bastard brother growing up and he couldn’t help but think some of those old ideals remained.

Indeed he would have preferred to face Jon and the dragon. Powerful redheaded women reduced him to a shaking mess. So did Stark women.

Thank Gods he hadn’t fallen for Sansa.

The highly skilled assassin, slayer of the Night King, harbinger of death that he had instead fallen flat on his face for at least helped him stand back up afterwards. Most of the time.

 

*

 

First Gendry heard the clanging. A cacophony that sounded over even the din of the bustling forge.

Then he saw the bundle of cloth moving towards him with pots and pans and Gods knew what else hanging off its middle. A voice was coming from underneath all the fabric but he couldn’t understand it until its owner peeled back a layer from its face.

‘Cor it is cold up here. And grey.’

‘Hot Pie?’

‘It's me, Gendry!’ Hot Pie said throwing his arms wide open in the forge doorway. A skillet dropped off his belt and fell to the floor.

Gendry greeted him with a hug. ‘You've not changed,’ he said.

‘Ere, you have, haven't you? Where's all your hair gone? Arya didn't mention the hair.’

‘You've seen Arya?’ Hope swelled in Gendry’s chest.

‘Yeah, on her way to kill the Queen. She gave me this. Said to bring it back to you.’

Gendry's blood turned to ice and he knew what it was to walk as a wight, a dead man somehow still living.

In Hot Pie’s hands he held the small hammer Gendry had given Arya as a token off his affection, of his promise, of their tentative contract. ~~~~

‘She gave it to you?’ he said, his voice hoarse, unable to take his eyes off the object in Hot Pie’s hands.

‘Yeah! Said it belonged to you and she was supposed to bring it back to you.’

Hot Pie dropped it into Gendry’s hands and it landed with a thump. They dipped so low as they took the weight of it that you would’ve been mistaken for thinking it weighed twice what it did. But that’s how it felt in his hands. Cold and heavy. Dead weight.

‘Not that you look too happy about it,’ said Hot Pie.

‘I thought she would be the one to deliver it,’ Gendry said. He knew it was his voice that spoke but he didn't know where it found the ability to.

He turned it over in his hands.

‘Well she were planning on it, she was gonna pick it back up off me on her way home from battle. Wanted me to keep it safe for her, she said it was very important.’ Gendry’s head snapped up. ‘“Hot Pie,” she said, “guard this with your life or I'll take it.” And I said, “What you'll take the hammer off me?” and she said, “No, I'll take your life.”’ Hot Pie laughed, holding his stomach. 'And you know what I really believed her! I really did for about a minute!' He shook his head.

Gendry started to be able to breathe again. She'd left it for safekeeping. Her intentions hadn't changed. She'd left it with the other part of their hallowed trio, the three of whom had forged a bond that had seen them stare down death countless times. The trio who had probably been the only ones to escape Harrenhal simply by walking out its front gates.

‘Anyway, heard you were a Lord now, reckon I can get me one of them?’ Hot Pie craned his neck looking around the castle outside the forge as if the deeds to lordships and lands might just be hanging from the stone work like banners.

‘Hot Pie,’ Gendry said laughing and scooped him up. Hot Pie made a sound of surprise and delight amongst the clanging pots. Another one clattered to the floor.   

‘My friend,’ Gendry said with a shake of his head as he set him back down and braced his hands on Hot Pie’s shoulders, ‘she's going to kill you.’

Hot Pie’s delighted face fell. ‘But I brought it back to you!’

‘And that was her job,’ Gendry said.

‘Well, yeah, alright so I left a bit early — it was getting hairy at the inn, folks I didn't like the look of and Old Tom popped his clogs last month. It just weren't the same anymore. And when Arya mentioned you and us and how we could all be together again at Storm’s Over, I thought why wait? Why not join the two of us – you and me – together at least?

 ‘I mean I could've gone after _her_ but I don't know how much cooking they need down there on the front lines. And I heard they're really hungry up here and I got some new recipes to try on some willing people — nothing bad! Good food, just different is all. And Arya told me about this pie once, sounded strange to me but I figure they like things a bit different up here...

 'Gendry? Where are you going?’

‘To get started on some armour for you, you're going to need it.’

‘Am I?’ He hurried after Gendry, his pack and the various pans he had tied to his waist banging against his legs. Gendry was destined to spend his life with the stealthiest member of the Seven Kingdoms and loudest member. ‘Am I becoming a knight?’

‘No, you're becoming the next entry on Arya Stark’s list.’

 

*

 

‘Gendry,’ Hot Pie said, lounging on the bench near Gendry’s station in the forge with a crust in his hand. He’d been at Winterfell a while now and it hadn’t taken Hot Pie long at all to make it home, ‘isn't Arya pretty now?’

Gendry laughed.

‘What, you don't think so?’

‘Yeah,’ Gendry said. ‘It's at least a small part of why I asked her to marry me.’

‘You _did_?’

‘Yes.’ Gendry looked round from where he worked. Hot Pie’s eyes had never been wider. ‘… she didn't tell you that?’

‘Oh.’ Hot Pie stood and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Gendry. I'm sorry.’

‘She didn't say no!’

Hot Pie’s eyebrows shot up, his mouth hung open.

‘Okay, she didn’t say yes either. And at first she did say no... But she said maybe. If she survives. And I think that's as much a yes as anyone was ever going to get.’

Hot Pie gave him a kind nod and wordlessly pulled Gendry in for a hug.

‘Hot Pie,’ Gendry said, ‘that's good. That was good news.’

‘I know.’

‘She does like me.’

‘I know.’

‘She wants me.’

‘Of course.’

‘Look — we’ve slept together you know!’  _Fuck._ Why had he said that? Why was he justifying all this to Hot Pie? Thank Gods Byrne was on a break and they were alone in this forge.

‘And then she was gone? Off to war?’ Hot Pie said in patient voice.

‘Well, yeah...’ Gendry said. He didn't like the gentle look on Hot Pie’s face.

Hot Pie let out a heavy sigh.

‘I've heard it all before, my friend. Women on the road travelling after soldiers they think will love them and the unborn babe in their belly. Soldiers looking to hide from the women with their—’

‘Hot Pie. Arya hasn't left me with a baby to raise. This is a very different situation.’

‘You'll always have me. We'll make Thunder Town a beautiful castle with the best food of the Seven Kingdoms whether Arya joins us or not, alright? Hot Pie,’ he said and pointed at his own chest, ‘will always keep an oven warm for his old mate Gendry,’ he tapped Gendry’s chest, ‘and a hearty pie inside it.’

Hot Pie ended his speech with a warm smile and a wink that didn’t comfort Gendry in the way he felt Hot Pie had intended it. Gendry flashed him a tight smile.

‘Reckon the Winterfell ones need stoking about now? Been a while—’

‘Fucking hell!’ Hot Pie said scrambling out the forge, ‘the brioche!’

Gendry watched him leave with a smirk.

‘What the fuck’s brioche?’ asked Byrne, returning to the forge and passing by Gendry before setting back to his work on the other side of the smithy.

‘I do not know,’ said Gendry as he picked up his own work.

‘It’s an Essos thing. Don’t know who told Hot Pie about it though.’

Her voice came from the shadows like it did these days. But the shadows hadn’t truly spoken to him in weeks and he reminded himself he was imagining it. That happened a lot, an internal monologue of her voice in his head, her uniquely insightful and dark commentary on the goings on of Winterfell.

He looked to the corner anyway, he couldn’t help himself because he always hoped he wasn’t just hearing things and today was the day he got his reward.

A face looked back at him.


	3. The New Definition of a Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He looked to the corner anyway, he couldn’t help himself because he always hoped he wasn’t just hearing things and today was the day he got his reward.
> 
> A face looked back at him.

Gendry's hammer dropped to the floor, narrowly missing his foot.

Arya stood there smirking, a couple new scars on her face and as ever beautiful as before.

‘What have you been working on?’ she asked as he continued to stare wordlessly.

He hadn’t thought she’d be back for at least a few more weeks. Hearing the war was over had been the sweetest news which he could only taste when he’d heard she had survived it. And then he’d had to wait. To be patient, just as he had all those years in King’s Landing after Davos freed him and before he came back for him.

This time it was Arya he waited for but in truth, as torturous as the wait was, some days he comforted himself with the thought that as long as it took her to return, the longer her ‘maybe’ stayed a maybe and couldn’t become a no.

The possibility of spending his life with Arya remained whilst she was away from him.

He dropped the metal he held in his other hand — too cold now to be pliable anyway — and moved towards her as she in the same moment stepped towards him, wrapping herself around him.

Gods she was so small and so much bigger. He was never going to get used to the size of her. Sometimes she seemed too small for all the force she contained. Others she seemed so much bigger, so much more than he ever remembered or imagined her to be.

He held her so tight he was sure he’d bruised at least one rib if they hadn’t already been damaged from the fighting. He only let go when he heard her struggle to speak his name.

Releasing her he moved to apologise, to ask her if she was alright but he saw that tears shone in her eyes and before he could speak she grabbed his face to kiss him like she had the day she left.

He couldn’t take solace in the kiss. He’d proposed to her and she’d kissed him and his heart had soared. But then she’d started talking and her refusal had stabbed a place in his heart that had ached once or twice before — rejected by The Brotherhood, by his master in King’s Landing — but compared to those times it had been torn wide open then with a cleaver. And he’d thought Arya preferred daggers.

 Arya had looked close to tears before she kissed him and if she was were they of happiness to be reunited or sadness at what was about to come?

She didn’t have his hammer but no doubt she had a knife and he knew he’d willingly take it to the heart again for her if that was her decision.

Breathless he broke from the kiss.

‘How?’ he said, his eyes scanning her face wildly.

‘I took a boat. Ser Davos helped me find one.’

‘Did he make you row it?’

‘No. I think he likes me more than you.’

‘Most people do.’

‘No,’ she said with a smile on her face and a shake of her head. ‘They don’t actually. Lord Baratheon is very popular in the capital. Although they wonder what he’s still doing smithing in a northern castle. Sansa says the repairs can be done without you now.’

‘Well, the Lord is in want of a wife. But he has a very certain set of requirement,’ Gendry said, his eyes set firmly on her.

‘Which are?’ Arya said, holding his gaze.

‘Small but fierce. Deadly. Beautiful,’ Gendry started counting off his list on his fingers with his other arm around her. ‘Loyal. Protective. Good sense of humour. Family orientated. And, most importantly of all, filthy rich.’

Arya snorted.

‘I don’t want her to just be after me for my castle! You probably wouldn’t understand what it’s like to have to worry about these things.’

‘The luxury of being a nobody,’ she surmised. He smiled. ‘Have they been met? Your requirements? It’s quite a list.’

‘You taught me a thing or two about lists. And you are the only rich girl I know so… yes, completely and utterly,’ he said pressing his forehead to hers. ‘But I think you know it’s not my requirements that needed fulfilling,’ he whispered.

‘Well I did ask you what you’ve been working on?’

Gendry blinked and jerked back. This felt like a test. A test he was about to fail.

‘I talked to Sansa?’ he ventured.

‘I know, I heard it went about as well as you’d expected.’

‘Marginally better actually. But that’s not what you meant?’

‘Did the wights knock you on the head more times than you told me or are you being purposefully slow? I thought you mentioned something about rings!’

She looked angry. Angry and worse, frightened _. I’ll make you a ring._ He’d said that. And she hadn’t seemed all that keen at the time. But now she seemed scared to think he didn’t have one waiting for her. His heart started to pound. She wanted a ring.

And he had two.

He retrieved a small wooden box from a draw in a table at the back.

‘Don’t tell Sansa about the wood,’ he said. ‘Not that I used much.’

The box wasn’t big, crudely made even but when he opened it up two beautiful dark rings led nestled inside it.

One had the Stark sigil of a direwolf’s head attached to it. The other was a plain band with two antlers forking off from it. The tips of which looked sharp.

The work was ornate but not delicate. There was a robustness, a strength to the pieces.

‘The bands got dragonglass in it, you know, just in case. Never got to finish using it all up before they came. And the antlers have a little too – but its hard to work with and they were tricky. Eldon helped me with those bits, he’s been silversmithing for years though he’ll make you a hundred solid nails in less time it takes me to plate a shield,’ Gendry laughed nervously.

‘Its for you. If you want to wear it,’ he said pointing at the antler ring. ‘That ones for me.’ He pointed at the direwolf.

Arya hadn’t said anything. She just stared.

‘Or it can be the other way round if you want. I can probably resize the direwolf,’ he scratched the back of his head, he shouldn’t have used dragonglass, it wasn’t easy to work with and now he would have to try and shrink it without shattering it, ‘and I can always wear the stag around my neck, you’ll have to wear yours like that I guess anyway, when you’re off fighting, I got you a chain too—’

‘I want the stag.’

‘Yeah?’ he said, looking up at her. ‘So you’re saying yes? Really yes?’

‘I think if we could come to an arrangement about the new definition of a lady in this post-war realm.’

‘Absolutely,’ Gendry nodded hard. ‘Absolutely. You know, Jon, he’s got this friend, Sam? He writes a lot. Reads too. Knows stuff. I heard he was head of the Maesters now, sounds like he could write an entry or two in a book and we could have a new idea of a lady within a week or two.’

‘You think that’s how long it takes to plan a wedding? Sansa will be scandalised.’

‘I have no idea how to plan a wedding. But its just cloaks and rings and a maester? We could do that in no time. I don’t think you’re too hung up on the details, are you?’

Her brow furrowed and he started to panic.

‘Arya,’ he said and lifted her face so her eyes met his. ‘You said I'd make a wonderful lord some day and any lady would be lucky to have me but I don't want to be a lord with any lady, I want to be _your_ lord.’

 *

 _You'd be my lady_. There were times long after they parted when his words to her the day he'd told her he wouldn't come with her to her family had resurfaced in her mind. Days when she understood more what happened between a man and a woman who loved one another. What was felt.

And she heard those words in a new way, in a different way than he had meant back then when he talked of society and position and customs over family and comradeship and equality. And she allowed herself for small moments in quiet spaces in her mind where Arya Stark never truly left to imagine he meant it in that different way. To imagine he loved her how her father had loved her mother, to imagine he wanted her to be his, to be by his side.

And now he offered her the chance. So Gods why couldn't she take it? 

‘You asked me to be family once and now I’m asking you. You have every right to knock me down where I stand as I did you but – ’

‘Are you trying to put me off?’ Arya asked.

‘Gods, no!’ Gendry said. ‘Sansa could help you with that if you wanted though.’

‘She’s not going to stop me.’

‘You should probably mention that to her. I’m just saying, you could be my family _and_ my lady. And I could be your lord. We could have it all.’

She swallowed thickly. They’d both been taking any scraps of food, warmth, love and safety they could snatch for years. She had literally begged blind on the streets of a foreign land for anything that someone could spare and sometimes all she was thrown was their shit. To think that now they could truly have so much seemed a lie. A dream.

She wanted to explore Storm’s End with Gendry. She wanted to find out all the castle’s secrets, understand all its defences. She wanted to range in the woods nearby.

On a sleepless night before the last battle she thought she had seen Nymeria again at the tree line. When she tried to follow she saw no trace of her or any other wolves. The next night, the night of their victory she fell into a deep sleep where she dreamt of meeting Nymeria in the woods near Storm’s End. They ran there together until Nymeria returned to her pack and Arya left her, heading back towards the castle with the same thought in her mind.

Pack.

The dream had frightened and excited her in equal measure and she’d thought of it often on her journey back to Winterfell.

‘We’re not having children for years. At least. If ever.’

‘Okay.’

‘Gendry, don’t just agree.’

‘You want to argue?’

‘I want you to consider it. That means no heirs. I don’t know if I want children, I don’t know if I can willingly bring them into the world… or physically for that matter. I haven’t bled in months.’

Gendry’s brow furrowed in confusion.

‘Not _that_ bleeding,’ she said knowing he thought of her bloody face and body after the battle.

‘Oh,’ he said with dawning understanding. ‘I meant what I said about the orphans. About all the ones without a home. We can protect them.’

Would Gendry choose an orphan as his heir? She knew he would. Undoubtedly. Even one of no relation to the Baratheon name because he didn’t even truly believe he held a right to it. He’d lived too long as a bastard to truly know a House.

‘You know it’s said to be protected with magic? Storm’s End?’ she said.

‘Yeah, I heard about that.’

‘It doesn’t put you off?’ she asked. His interaction with the Red Woman’s magic hadn’t been a happy experience.

‘No, I’ve got you to protect me from that kind of thing now haven’t I? Unless you’ve got your eye on a different castle, m’lady? Where are we sacking? Where next do we lay siege?’

‘No,’ she said with a small smile on her lips. ‘I’m ready to rest. For a little while.’

He leant his forehead against hers.

‘Lie down with me, then,’ he said. ‘For a little while.’

She swayed slightly, her forehead pressing back against his. Gods was she tired.

Feeling her melt against him Gendry wrapped an arm around her back and moved them towards the door.

‘The forge...’ she protested weakly as he led her away.

‘Didn’t you hear, Lady Sansa doesn't need me. And Lord Baratheon likes to take the day at his own leisure.’

 

It took all of Arya’s energy to make it to the bed. She’d thought she’d been tired, boneless, after the Battle of Winterfell then a new type of fatigue hit her following the end of the war in King’s Landing and still she’d made it on to the boat home. But now, here, in Gendry’s arms finally able to stop, it hit her like the force of a thousand hammer blows.

Gendry held her up, kept the wave of it from breaking the bow and taking her under. And slowly she crawled under the sheets and he moved them back up over her as he led down beside her and placed a kiss on her brow.

‘Thank you, my lady,’ he said and Arya had no energy to admonish him.

‘What for?’ she muttered moving on to his chest.

‘Coming back,’ he said, tightening his arms around her.

‘Thanks for waiting,’ she said.

‘I’m good at that. Hot Pie isn’t.’

‘I know. Sansa wrote.’

‘I think she’s ready to let him come to Storm’s End with us or as Hot Pie currently calls it Lightning’s Fall. In fact, he might be what seals the deal.’

‘She doesn’t like his pies?’

‘He keeps making ones based on some recipe you gave him. Sansa’s never heard of it. But he reckons you said it was a family recipe.’

‘Oh Gods,’ she murmured, ‘he’s going to kill us all.’

Gendry laughed and she felt the rumble of his chest. It made her smile.

There were a few moments of gentle silence and she felt herself being pulled under by the rhythm of his breathing into sleep.

‘My heart nearly stopped when he turned up, pulled that hammer out — said you told him to bring him it back,’ Gendry’s voice was thick, lost in a memory.

Her eyes opened. He’d thought – he’d thought she had been refusing him again.

Her hand moved across his chest to his heartbeat. Still there. Still beating. _Not today. Not today._

She should tell him how she felt. He deserved more than the token of a hammer delivered back to him and not even by her own hand.

But words were hard. Thinking was hard. Gendry didn't seem to get that or just couldn't shut up.

‘Sorry,’ he said as if reading her thoughts, ‘I’ve only had Hot Pie to talk to for weeks. And by that, I mean listen to.’

Arya burrowed deeper into his arms. They were warm. They were strong and stable and safe. It was the first feeling of true safety she'd had in years and she had no plans to leave it soon. Led in her home, in her own bed, with a man she loved, who loved her, tucked away from a world torn and ravaged, burnt and flayed.

It needed rebuilding. But not alone. They didn't have to do it alone any more.

And they could have as many pies as they wanted whilst they tried. 

 ‘Gendry?’

 ‘Arya.’

 ‘Did I mention that I love you?’

 ‘You did not.’

 ‘Okay. Well... that.’

 ‘That’s what I get?’

‘Yes.’

 ‘I’ll take it.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honourable mentions for the other names by which Hot Pie has been referring to Storm’s End as:
> 
> Blown Over  
> Wind’s Finished  
> Thunder Done


End file.
